Please see the screenshot below. The low C in the cello is connected to the G-flat with a slur. In Sibelius, this plays back correctly. In Dorico, the C is shortened by approximately a quaver, as if the last quaver in the tie were replaced with a rest, and then the G-flat and C-flat are played as if slurred together. This looks like a bug to me, since what is being played is clearly not what is written. If the fermata is removed, the phrase plays back correctly.
Any ideas what is happening here? Does anyone know of a workaround?
krummholz, without ever having done it myself, can’t you switch to Play Mode and in the Key Editor drag the end of the low c to the right - so it extends until the g flat?
Another thought, wouldn’t it be clearer to position the fermata onto the second beat?
It would avoid ambiguities for the upper string players. Also, where exactly does Tempo I start?
Dorico might be reflecting this confusion under the hood.
I knew someone would suggest that and should have included a screen shot of the Key Editor view as well. My bad. As you can see from the image below, the Key Editor shows the played note as lasting the full length of the beat. It looks like it should play back correctly. But when played with the Key Editor in view, the cello goes silent before the end of the note is reached.
As to repositioning the fermata, that is easy to do in Sibelius (and in fact, the positions of the fermatas across the instruments were set in Sibelius and imported into Dorico via MusicXML), but I haven’t the faintest idea how to do it in Dorico. If I try to create the fermatas from scratch in Dorico, they are placed at the beginning of each tied note, so it’s (apparently) impossible to position the fermata on the second beat. If I were notating this on paper, I wouldn’t even put fermatas on the notes played by the other instruments - the idea is that the upper strings fade away and the cello is left below, emerging from the miasma and then growing into the ascending phrase.
Also: if the fermata is created as I described above, I cannot adjust its duration in the Properties window, or rather, adjusting the duration has absolutely no effect when played back. As an aside, done that way, the cello C isn’t shortened - but the articulation is still wrong, as the G-flat and C-flat are slurred together.
krummholz,
firstly you can create a fermata in Dorico at any rhythmical position. The way to do it: start Note Input, so the caret becomes visible. Use the right/left Arrow Keys to move to the desired position. Then input the fermata via the right panel or via Popover: Shift-H followed by “fer” and Enter.
IIRC the default fermata playback definition involved a hold plus a small gap in the sound before proceeding, but this can be changed. I am a little hazy on the details, but check the CC tracks of the Key Editor rather than just the note “rectangles” to see what is happening.
This was all described in the Version History when fermata playback first became a feature. My recollection is that there is a way to control it.
Derek,
Thanks. I think I see now - in the Holds and Pauses editor, there is an option for “hold only” - it appears that if that button is checked, the gap is suppressed. It looks like what I need is two fermatas, like in the image below, with “hold only” on both of them. The semantics of the hold durations still look a little mysterious to me, but I might be able to figure it out.
